only heaps of pebbles in its place. And everywhere we came across old water-races, remains of machinery and dredges, and the ruins of huts to show where the claims had been.
Most of the pebbles and rocks were covered with a red fungus that made them look as if the sky had rained red paint, and our old Jehu said that in the spring, just after the rain has fallen, the odour of it is so strong that the whole neighbourhood is scented, and people scrape the fungus off and put it with water into bottles, to use as a perfume.
To our disappointment we were told by the Government boatman at Kanieri that the wind was blowing in the wrong direction, and that it was unsafe to go on the lake. So we were obliged to abandon all hope of boating for that day, as well as a walk of great beauty to the “Dorothy Falls” on the other side of the lake, and console ourselves as well as we could by inspecting the Government trout hatchery. Meanwhile the luncheon we had brought was set out in an exquisitely clean kitchen by the boatman’s mother, an old, old Irish dame who, when we were discussing our cakes and ale later, grew very eloquent in her comparisons between the girls of her youth and those of young New Zealand. But when I declared that in all ages since St. Patrick drove the serpents out of Ireland there were never any girls to compare with the Irish, she laughed, and said,
“Shure, lassie, it’s the good and the bad ye’ll be findin’ in ivery nation!”
As we were going on to Kumara we could not linger too long in the pleasant woodland, though there were so many subjects for my camera and Mrs Greendays’s sketch-book that we could have spent the whole afternoon there. The little huts were so quaint with their odd chimneys built out at the back, all of wood,—in one a pasty of children, dressed evidently for some occasion, were gathering nosegays in a charming old garden, and the tiny hut was almost covered with crimson ramblers and banksia roses.
The train to Kumara landed us at the station of that tiny township at about five o’clock, and we then had to drive in a ramshackle old omnibus some distance into the town. Kumara will live in the history of New Zealand as the cradle of the late Mr. Seddon’s political life, but it will soon be a town of the past, for there is nothing except the gold-working to keep a population in it, very little agriculture is carried on in the neighbourhood, the trees in the surrounding bush are small, so that even the sawmills now at work will soon have exhausted their supply, and since the railway has been opened to Otira very few passengers prefer the longer coach-drive to that place. But we preferred coaching to railway travelling; too, we wanted to see the gold-fields.
They are only a short walk from the town, but a straggling village of half-a-dozen cottages, two or three provision shops, and several bars, exists on the edge of the old workings, although these are practically abandoned now, for nearly all the gold has been worked out.
